The public television program Alaska Weather will end this summer after 47 years on the air.
The 30-minute daily broadcast, which is produced by Alaska Public Media and the National Weather Service, covers things like incoming storms, sea ice and big picture climate trends like glacial retreat. It reaches some of the most remote places in Alaska.
But Alaska Public Media has decided to end production, citing financial constraints. As a result, meteorologists and emergency managers fear they’re losing a vital way of reaching people.
“That TV option exists in way more places than any other single form of media,” said Carrie Haisley, chief of emergency services for the National Weather Service in Anchorage.
“A business decision”
For Alaska Public Media, the decision came down to cost.
“It’s been on the air for decades. We didn’t want to end that legacy,” said Linda Wei, the chief content officer for Alaska Public Media. “Ultimately, it was a business decision.”
She said assembling the show required significant time and funding. In an emailed statement, President and CEO of Alaska Public Media Ed Ulman said production of Alaska Weather requires two to three hours of editing time each day, with a cost of around $200,000 annually.
And Alaska Public Media received no outside funding to produce the program.
“We have been assembling and distributing the show unsupported for at least the last six years,” Wei said. “It just wasn’t sustainable anymore.”
“Notable large gaps”
After a final broadcast on June 30, the show will transition to a YouTube-only format. But that change may not work for everyone who relies on the program. Many in Alaska still don’t have access to reliable, high speed internet.
Through the Alaska Public Media partnership, the weather service was able to tap into a wide broadcast network via public TV channels like KTOO 360TV in Juneau and KUAC TV in Fairbanks and through the Alaska Rural Communications System, a free state-owned satellite system that broadcasts to more than 200 rural and tribal communities.
There are other ways the weather service reaches people, but they all have serious limitations. There’s a 24-hour phone line that people can call for weather information, but that option doesn’t reach people in emergency situations.
When there is an emergency event like a major storm warning, NOAA Radio is an option. It’s a transmission of weather updates that comes from National Weather Service offices. Radio stations automatically tap into it to broadcast emergency messages.
“But it doesn’t cover the whole state,” Haisley said. “In fact, there are notable large gaps.”
And though broadband internet and cell service have spread rapidly since Alaska Weather TV started in 1976, Don Moore, the director of the Alaska Environmental Science and Service Integration Center, said the internet is not yet a replacement for television.
“We have to consider the costs of data. You know, the internet does not come free,” Moore said. “When there’s a TV show that they can watch, they’re not having to use their internet to do that.”
“Opportunity in chaos”
Without the TV show, the weather service is left to take stock.
“We are disappointed, but there’s opportunity in chaos,” Haisley said. “Hopefully, we are able to take this and modify what we do in a way that helps people.”
It’s not clear exactly how many Alaskans rely on television to get their weather. None of the stations that broadcast the program track ratings, so no one really knows how many people are tuning in each day.
But Haisley believes the loss of TV will be a chance to better understand the ever-evolving options for public communication.
“We do recognize that as people change the way they consume media, that we need to change the way we deliver information,” she said. “We want to try to reach more people through new ways that people are gravitating towards with the changes in technology.”
One of the most recent developments is the growing importance of social media. During Typhoon Merbok, for instance, communities used sites like Twitter and Facebook to share critical weather updates.
The weather service hopes to better tap into those networks by introducing more graphics and short-form content.
“More bite-sized, elevator-speech kind of updates on what the weather’s doing,” Moore said.
When Alaska weather moves to YouTube, the 30-minute program will likely be broken down into three separate segments including a public forecast, an aviation forecast and a marine forecast.
Those short videos will demand less time and money as the weather service moves to produce Alaska Weather on their own. But they’re also better suited for social media, and they may be more convenient for TV stations that can broadcast quick updates between other programs.
For the weather service, the end of Alaska Weather highlights an urgent need for more information about how people get their weather. To start, they’ve launched an outreach campaign to gather comments on how people across the state access their weather.
Alaskans can send their thoughts to nws.service-changecomments@noaa.gov between May 15 and July 30.
